The role of sleep oscillations in temporal lobe organization

即使我们睡觉时，大脑也没有休息。相反，在睡眠期间，大脑充满了呈缓慢振荡形式的同步神经活动。长期以来，这些振荡一直与帮助记忆加强或“巩固”有关，但慢波期间涉及的大脑区域及其所经历的处理仍然没有得到解决。新皮质中在经历过程中活跃的神经元在这些睡眠振荡期间“重新激活”，这表明了加强记忆痕迹的一种方法。尽管这种现象首先出现在大鼠海马体（一种有助于形成新记忆的结构）中，但我继续证明，重新激活是在新皮质的大而独立的区域中作为同步过程发生的。这也是灵长类动物记忆痕迹重新激活的首次证明，如果重新激活是人类记忆巩固的基础，那么这是一个重要的先决条件。

Even when we sleep, the brain is not at rest. On the contrary, during sleep, the brain is full of synchronized neural activity that takes the shape of slow oscillations. These oscillations have long been associated with helping memories to strengthen, or 'consolidate', yet the brain regions involved during slow waves and the processing they undergo is still unresolved. Neurons in the neocortex that were active during an experience 'reactivate' during these sleep oscillations, suggesting one way of strengthening a memory trace. Although this phenomenon was first seen in the rat hippocampus - a structure that helps in forming new memories, I went on to show that reactivation occurs as a synchronized process throughout large, separated regions of the neocortex. This was also the first demonstration of memory trace reactivation in primates, an important prerequisite if reactivation underlies the consolidation of memories in humans.